Going Looking For Monsters
by sasha2017
Summary: It's 1984. Wham are on the radio and Sixteen Candles is on the big screen. It's been a year since the events that led to the defeat of the Demogorgan and the loss of Eleven. The boys are pining for their missing friend and despite their best efforts they can't reach her. That is they can't reach her until she reaches them. Can the boys save their friend?


Going Looking for Monsters

"Hey," Dustin said. "Do you fancy a game of dungeons? I can get the gang together."

"Not today," Mike said.

"Is it because of El?" Dustin asked.

"I have a strange feeling," Mike told his friend. "It doesn't matter though. It's silly"

"Tell me," Dustin said.

"I just have a strange feeling that she's near," Mike said. "That she's trying to get a message to me."

"Okay," Dustin said.

"See I told you it's silly," Mike said. "She could be anywhere."

"It's not silly," Dustin said. "We know nothing about that place she's in. She could be near for all we know."

The boys, Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas, had been friends since before they could remember united by a love of Dungeons and Dragons among other things. In 1983 their lives had been altered in a way in which transformed all their futures.

All four of the boys played a different role in the gang. Lucas was the realistic one who told it how it was and told it straight. Dustin tended to take life in a lighter way and to see the funny side of even the darkest moment. Will Byers was honest and couldn't tell a lie however hard he attempted to. Mike Wheeler was the heart of the group and it was his tendency to love and to love hard that had landed them in their latest predicament. The boys were united though in their intelligence, the fact that they were outsiders who would always be on the periphery of the society of Hawkins, Indiana, and that they wanted to get Eleven to get back at nearly any risk to themselves that they might have to take. It was Eleven after all who had saved Hawkins, who had saved them all. They knew that they would have venture into the Upside Down if they stood any chance at rescuing Eleven. Though it was Eleven who had broken them it was Eleven who had brought them all together again stronger and closer than ever.

It was 1984 and it had been a year since Eleven had disappeared into the unknown, sinister depths of the Upside Down. The boys had grown that bit much older and had found that with age came a creeping fear that hadn't been there as strongly as when they had met and lost Eleven. They wouldn't let this fear grip them. Mike Wheeler had a connection to Eleven still that was almost tangible and yet he couldn't tell his friends as he couldn't even tell it to himself. As his teenage years crept closer he could frame his feelings towards her in a better way. They still had a lot of unanswered questions not the least of which were where had Eleven come from and where had she disappeared to. They knew vaguely that she was in the Upside Down and Nancy and Jonathan had attempted to describe it to them, but to Mike it was like a bad nightmare. It was a vague landscape with no firm details. He just knew that he couldn't bear thinking that she was there alone though if anyone was strong enough to survive it there it was her. He knew that Will was suffering as though his friend had made a noble attempt to conceal it he could see through his lies. So there Mike was caught between fear for the girl he thought he loved and terror of what would happen to them if they ever found a way into the Upside Down. Terror that the Upside Down was still there somewhere waiting to consume more of the people he cared about.

Mike gripped the edges of the bathroom sink. He felt tired and ill as he often did when he thought of Eleven and the Upside Down. He looked into the mirror above the sink and saw a boy he knew implicitly and a room that he knew nearly as well. His sister Nancy's bedroom door was propped open and Wham's Wake Me Up Before you Go Go was drifting from her radio. He couldn't understand what she saw in that band. He considered them a bunch of posers. The strip light on the ceiling flickered and dark and dangerous thoughts crowded into his mind. Now he knew the evil and the horrific things that lurked at the edge of his world he was scared of the dark. The bathroom was lunged into darkness and the only illumination was the scene that was being played out in the mirror. It was saying the obvious to state that the scene in that mirror had changed. Looking at what he could see Mike doubled over as if someone had punched him in the stomach, he refused to look away though. Eleven was looking out at him; at least he supposed she was looking at him. He couldn't be sure. She was framed against the Upside Down, which he recognised from Will's description of it. She was as pale as milk, her eyes were bruised purples and browns and her hair had grown out so it framed her face. Her face, neck and arms were covered in cuts and bruises as if she had either been running from something or fighting against somethings. He knew those sad eyes that were glaring from the mirror. He touched the mirror and traced his finger along Eleven's cheekbone. She was mouthing words he couldn't hear though he tried to read the letters on her lips. He was sure she was asking him to help her, to save her. Reflecting on the events of 1983 he couldn't believe that Eleven would ever have needed his help. She was the most capable person he had ever met and not just because of her powers and abilities. It must be dangerous there for Eleven to be in peril. He had to call the gang, as what they were about to do was a long time coming. Eleven and the Upside Down faded and they were replaced by a message: 'I'm at the kissing bench'. The message was daubed in black. Mike wanted to think it was oil. This message faded like Eleven and the other dimension had. It was replaced by the bathroom Mike knew so well and Mike himself. The Mike staring back at him looked as pale as Eleven had.

He wanted to run into his bedroom, burrow under the bedsheets with his torch and let the rest of the world deal with the Upside Down, but he had to help Eleven. She deserved it after what she had done for him, for everyone. He couldn't forget that, he had to keep reminding himself of that. He wasn't alone though. He picked up the receiver of his hamburger shaped phone and called the only person it occurred to him to phone.

"Hey, Mike," Will said his voice stretched into a yawn. "It's very late."

"I know, but this is serious." Mike told his closest friend.

The pause on the other end of the phone was telling. Mike knew his friend was considering a few things. He knew Will was aware he was calling him about Eleven and when it came to Eleven Will was torn. He wanted to help Eleven, but he had been scarred by what had happened to him in the Upside Down and didn't want to do anything that would wind up with him being back there.

"It's about El, isn't it?

"It is," Mike said. "I've seen something and I know you've seen something too. She sent me a message, Will, I know where she is."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Can you call Henderson and Sinclair and ask them to meet us at the wood?"

"Okay," said Will. "It's happening tonight, isn't it?"

"It is," Mike said. "If you have a problem with that then you can stay out of it. I'm going to do it with or without you. I'll do it on my own if I have to."

"We've always been there for each other," replied Will. "Why would we stop having each other's backs now?"

They'd tried to rescue Eleven, of course they had. They had searched half-heartedly at first because they were terrified and then more fervently when she had been gone a long time and they were desperate. All the old gateways they knew of had shut themselves off for some reason and new one weren't likely to announce themselves. They were still scared, still terrified, but they were beginning to realise they loved Eleven as they loved each other.

Mike's bike skidded to a halt at the edge of Mirkwood and he almost slid over his handlebars. The wood seemed a world away from the road his house stood upon which was bathed in the light of many streetlights. Peering through the trees was like looking into the black pit of hell and that was without thinking about the gateway to the Upside Down that now knew lay within it. Mike could sense it, it was something he could almost smell, almost taste. Something was off. Had it always been like this? When he had been a child he had played in Mirkwood, he had danced among its trees. Surely it wasn't the place. Somehow the leader of their little band of men and they looked to him for direction. Mike told the boys about what he had seen in the mirror, about the message Eleven had left him.

"We're going to help the weirdo," Lucas said. "That makes a lot of sense."

Sinclair leaned against a tree, folded his arms across his chest and glared at his friends as if daring them to disagree with his logic.

"You're such a shit," Dustin said. "Even after what she did you're still saying that shit."

Mike looked around at his friends, the four people in knew in the world as well as he knew himself. There was only one person missing from their gang and that was Eleven. Mike coiled his hands into fists. He stared at the curls escaping from under Henderson's cap, at Sinclair's mouth always ready to say something sassy and sharp and at Will who resembled him so closely they could be brothers.

"El told me where the gateway to the Upside Down is and I'm going there tonight," Mike said. "You can come along or you can be yellow bellied fools and let me go on my own. It's your choice."

Will stood to his full height, he had grown up a lot in the year since he had gone missing in a place not many people would ever see.

"I'll go all the way with you, Mike," he said. "I know where El is like I know where she, where all of you, saved me from."

"Will's not going to look better than me," Dustin said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"You guys are my friends and you're not a bad bunch," Lucas said. "I'm in."

"Thanks, guys," Mike said as he dried the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand. "I know that I'm asking a lot, but I knew I could rely on you guys. I knew you wouldn't let me down."

The kissing tree stood in the deepest bowels of Mirkwood in a small clearing. Its thick trunk twisted into two broad branches at its middle. Its gnarled face showed it was older than many of the trees that filled the wood. Mike wondered if this was a new gateway or whether this curtain between this world and the world of the Demogorgan had been there for a long time. He considered in his mind whether many people had come through this passage and, if they had, how many of these people had lived to tell the tale. Will's face had grown paler and his eyes dark with tears.

"I don't know if I can do it," he said.

He closed his eyes and Mike wondered what was playing behind his eyelids. Henderson interlaced his friend's hand with his chubby fingers.

"It's okay," he said. "You've been in worse shit. You've been in the worst shit possible."

"The monster," Will said in a small voice. "Oh, the monster."

"I'll go first," Mike said. "She's my…she's my friend. I should go first."

Bile scorched Mike's throat, he might have convinced his friends of his bravery, his valour, but convincing himself was an entirely different matter. Eleven's face rose up in his mind as something fixed and immovable. He looked into her sad eyes, looked at her quiet smile and his resolve hardened. He began to crawl through the gap that parted through the roots of the tree. The membrane he came across stretched as he pushed against it before bursting. He emerged into the parallel universe. It wasn't true that the human imagination was more terrible than anything you could find on earth, if the Upside Down was part of earth. The cold burned, he had never known that the cold could burn. The tendrils that wrapped around everything were pulsing, as if they were alive in the same way that the boys were alive. It was as if everything was bleeding, as if everything was in pain.

"El," Mike called. He began to stumble through a fog so thick it was like trying to stare through a brick wall.

He could hear his three friends trudging along behind him. As growls rent the air the four boys clung to each other making sure they didn't step on twigs and that their footfalls were quiet. The monster, wherever it was, did neither of these things, but Mike supposed when you were at the top of the food chain you didn't have to. They nearly passed her as she was just a lump under a sheet of leaves. Mike lifted her up in his arms and she didn't even whimper. She felt light like a handful of twigs. She looked up at from a gaunt face, her bony hands reaching for his face. The much of her skin that he could see was covered in cuts and bruises. He brushed her long hair out of her eyes and smiled at her.

"Shush, El," he said.

The monster growled again, this time louder and closer.

"We don't want to be around when that thing arrives," Sinclair said.

"I thought ahead for this situation," Dustin said with an impish smile on his face.

He rolled up his t-shirt to show the gun that was tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

"Do you even know how to use that thing?" Mike asked him. "You could kill us all."

The monster was approaching them and it wasn't being quiet about it. They could hear trees being wrenched out of the ground, boulders being cast aside and birds squawking as they are threatened into the air. The demorgogan emerged into the forest before them on its long, spindly legs towering over the four boys and Eleven who was unconscious in Mike's arms. Saliva trailed from its mouth. Its face opened into four flaps to reveal a massive sucker. Henderson groped for the gun in his waistband but his hands were trembling so hard that it slipped from his grip and fell onto the forest floor. Mike placed Eleven on the ground behind him. Sinclair and Will were throwing anything at hand at the monster, but they just hit bounced off its leathery skin.

"We're dead," Lucas said. "It's been good knowing you boys."

Dustin had retrieved the gun from the ground and with his shaking hand he was attempting to train it on the demorgogan. The gun fire went off with a sharp crack. The four boys looked around the clearing wondering what had happened. The monster had fallen onto its knees and the forest floor shook with the weight of it. Black blood was oozing from the gun wound on its thigh and was spreading across the ground. Its cry of agony could be heard throughout the forest. Mike wondered if it could be heard outside the Upside Down, in their dimension.

"I did it," Dustin said.

"Yes, well, we can celebrate when we get out of here," Lucas said.

The four boys, with Eleven held against Mike's chest, ran through the Upside Down to the kissing tree that stood where they had left it. It looked down at them with its old, solemn eyes of wisdom, eyes that had seen the passing of time, eyes that had seen things like the monster come and go. They took it in turns to crawl out from between the kissing tree's roots into the world that belonged to them. They emerged into the warmth of an early summer's night. Mike lay Eleven onto the soft, moist earth. The other boys were doubled over panting.

"I've never run so fast in my life," Will said.

"Hopefully you never have to again," Mike said.

Eleven's eyes fluttered open and she smiled weakly at the four boys looking down at her. Already the warmth and colour was returning to her face, already she was looking like the old El they had known. She scrambled to her feet and wobbled on her unsure feet. Mike leapt to her side to support her.

"Mike, you saved me," she said. "You all saved me."

Mike touched her long hair.

"I prefer it shorter," he said. "You don't look like El with it like that."

The four boys climbed onto their waiting bikes with Eleven sitting on Mike's handlebars. They were more united, more connected, than they had ever been. No one else would ever be able to share or to understand what they had experienced in the Upside Down, how close they had come to death. No one would be able to believe, to comprehend, that a lucky shot, like a roll of a dice, had made the difference between them dying in the sinister bowels of the Upside Down and them emerging into their own world safe. The four boys managed to smuggle Eleven into Mike's house, down his basement steps and into his basement itself. Mike swaddled Eleven in blankets next a heater. She had fallen asleep. Mike sat beside her watching her slumber, watching her frail chest rise and fall. She smiled before she opened her eyes, but when she did open her eyes they were black…


End file.
